Shaking off anxiety after bad experience. Need advice.

[victor]

I wonder about not being able to take a mask off in a pool. Don't we learn to swim in a pool as kids with no masks? By the time we start to learn scuba I'd think that most of us would have been swimming around in pools with no masks for years and having the mask _on_ would be the new experiance. Maybe that is the way to think of it: When you have the mask off think of yourself as a 9 year old kid diving to the bottom for coins.

Chris
The problem is breathing when you have taken the mask off. :huh:
As kids we have conditioned ourselves into holding our breath when we have water in our eyes and nose.
So mask empty, dry eyes and nose, breathe as normal, mask flooded or off, wet eyes and nose full of water, hold our breath.

It took me about 10 seconds the first time I put my face in the water with a reg to persuade my lungs that breathing was Ok.
After practise with a snorkel and no mask it becomes normal.

 

[Wayfarer2]

I would suggest taking the Rescue Diver course. I just completed mine on Aug 6th and it teaches you a lot about how to manage Stress and Panic both before during and after a dive. It also gives you a chance to practice some skills that will help you have more confidence in the water. It’s not nearly as easy as the OW and AOW courses but the Rescue diver course told me a lot about where my strengths and weaknesses are as a diver and will in the long run make me a much better diver. I am actually thinking of taking it again in a year or so to see how I have improved both in my dive skills and physical conditioning.

 

[TxHockeyGuy]

I'd personally wait on the rescue course a little bit until you get more comfortable. Rescue class will be task loading you and I don't think that's what you need right now. I've been dealing with anxiety issues throughout my diving so far. But you know what, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and I don't think it will be long at all until this is finally behind me.

I had an issue on an AOW dive that really freaked me out so I didn't complete the majority of my dives. My instructor had me show up at a quary 2 weeks later and knock out some of my AOW dives being buddied up with a DM. First thing we did though was 3 fun easy dives where the stated goal of the dives was to see as many fish as we could, max depth was maybe 27'. After that I did a search and recovery and then a night dive. It did loads for my confidence and I went back out to the same lake where I had my AOW troubles and completed the course just last weekend. I had one dive where I didn't feal comfortable, vis dropped to 2-3', and I thumbed the dive. On the safety stop the anxiety went away so after being on the surface and talking about it we decided to finish the dive. I had no further issues on that dive. Remember, you can call a dive at any time for any reason and you shouldn't be afraid to do so.

Trust me, you are not alone in your anxiety troubles and I think this is far more common than most want to admit. Get with an instructor or DM and so some really simple fun dives, worked for me.

 

[annlaur]

Hi everyone

I wanted to thank you again for all the great feedback, support and advice you gave me thru this thread, and wanted to let you know I've joined a dive club here in Paris and get a chance to work on my skills at least once a week, which is just great.
Anxiety is still there, but I can feel some improvement already.
For those interested, I've started a new thread, which will be sort of my dive journal. I thought it would be interesting not only to relate my personal experience, but also to tell people how a French club works out. Very different from Padi (I still plan on doing AOW, Peak Buoyancy and Rescue when the time comes, though) and a LOT cheaper (except if you include the costs of living in Paris... SIGH...)

Anyways thanks again to all. If you're coming to France, PM me, I'd be glad to meet for coffee or help with advice or whatever.

Cheers,

Anne-Laure

 

[annlaur]

Here's the link to my new thread :
Click here to read my dive journal
Hope I did it right this time.
Anne-Laure

 

[Midnight Star]

Anne,

The first step in overcoming anxiety, is to help determine what happened to bring it on. For example, is your anxiety a "trust again" issue, or a confidence issue. I'll give you an example for me...

When i'm training and playing around in a local pool, I do breath hold finning (underwater, usually hugging the bottom). The idea behind this isnt to see how long I can hold my breath as compared to others (perhaps going beyond my limitations in attempt to exercise bragging rights), but to practice a breath-held distance swim just incase something happened underwater and I needed to resurface without a working regulator. It's an exercise I highly recommend, but I wouldnt breath hold longer than 60-90 seconds. But onto my story ... as i'm reaching the other side (I swim deliberatly slow), I start getting a good urge to breathe, which is normal. But what isnt, is my mind now goes into a frenzy about this being how it feels to suffocate to death. Now strange as it sounds, thats when I have to really focus to keep my thoughts under control. Given the situation (no holdling upto or past blackout levels, shallow water, and reasonly good health and condition) I shouldnt be feeling this way at all. That type of anxiety prevents me from trying to further the distance, so it first must be overcame. So now, I need to figure out where this "thought" process originates from and how do I overcome it.

It mightve came from a bad swim lesson when I was younger, or growing up slightly obese perhaps from not being able to "catch my breath" as easily as others. It could also come from having the wind knocked out of me (gasping for air but nothing is there), or from a close family member dieing right before my eyes. It really could be any of the above. Since each is in a way an intangible but real problem, the only way to overcome it is this... set a known limitation for my distance to that which I know I can comfortably do. Which, over time will help to build my confidence on sucesses rather than failures.

If the anxiety is brought on by trust issues, then have confidence in yourself that you are a good person, and do make good decisions. That often we dont need to cast ourselves out into the blackness of blind trust, that many times we can and should only offer up that which we know and trust. For example, if someone says "Hey, let's go cave diving. Trust me, i'm the best". I'd have to reply, no thanks, you might be, but i'm not. There's nothing I can offer here, since i'm not certified, nor have any present desire to be certified as a cave diver. I'd be a liability, and a big one at that. On the other hand, if they were to say "Hey, there's a nice wreck dive just 20 miles out from shore, it's in shallow water not deeper than 45'. Interested?". Again, this is a more tempting offer since the depth would be within my breath-hold swimming range (pool training), but what would happened if we, for any reason, got 20 miles out with no way back. Anything I could bring to the party here? Common sense maybe (like, lets tell someone where were going), but physically no (if were stuck, I cant snap my fingers and whisk us away). It's exercising these "controls" over our decision making that helps us to gain confidence that we are making the best decisions, where we wont get into any trouble.


Good luck! I know you can overcome anything.

-----

Mike.

 

[Peachfairy73]

Hi, I get a panic attacked underwater too sometimes. I usually just stop, hang on at something, try to breath until I calm down and continue to dive.

The basic learning when we did the OW: Stop, Breath and Think

 

[Cacia]

The mysterious positive power of breath is amazing.

Deep slow breaths have an effect on our nervous system...

 

[rawls]

...I hadn’t been diving for 11 months (and hadn't read anything about diving ...

You were thinking the right way about needing a SCUBA review. You were thinking the wrong way by not following through with it...It's that trust me, you will be fine that can quickly get you into trouble.

(surprise : I get a BCD filled with salt water… that’s reassuring)

The BC filled with water caused you concern. Without a doubt it should have. Faulty equipment KILLS divers. It may have been faulty or the one who used it before might have simply not emptied it, not did the dive shop. Thing is...You don't know. Never dive with equipment that might be faulty. If your BC filled with water, dumping weights may not have gotten you back to the surface and there is a chance someone might not have seen you and, as a result, you might not be here today.I will give you a link to a good book that has a story about this having happened. The diver didn't turn out so well. Let's say he wasn't home for supper.

Next thing I know, everyone is in the water but me, as I’m frantically checking my gear for the 4th time. Plus I'm breathless from trying to put on socks and fins that are not my size...

I should have called the dive.

Yep....No doubt about it.

I stayed with that thought for what seems like a minute, trying to catch my breath, until I pictured my folks being told their daughter had drowned in the Red Sea (didn't consider ascending, I was too damn scared of corking to the surface).

The above could have easily become a reality. You are lucky.

Your anxiety about diving began before the dive, and carried through the dive, and after the dive. Everything you wrote suggested your instincts were telling you that things weren't right. Your problem was you didn't go with your instincts. Please trust your instincts. Someone posted that you didn't do that much wrong. You did PLENTY wrong. And that incident could have very well killed you. You simply didn't apply safe diving measures. You thought about these things, you just didn't follow through and call the dive. How do you avoid anxiety toward diving in the future...It's called safety. The good thing is it sounds like you have learned from this incident. See link below.

www.mike@seaduction.com Book..."Diver Down...Real World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them" .....See page 153...

 

[shakeybrainsurgeon]

This sounds a little bit like "post-traumatic stress disorder' or PTSD. Once thought to be limited to combat veterans, we now know that any perceived life-threatening event (car accident) can precipitate it. The hallmarks are 1) immediate anxiety about any situation that resembles the event and 2) nightmares or daytime panic attacks when thinking of the event. Don't rule out the help of a psychologist expert in PTSD. It is a common problem with people in auto accidents who develop anxiety over getting into a car, and often responds to things like biofeedback and counselling.

During an OW drill taking off and replacing my BC in the water, I put my arm through the BC and accidentally pulled the dump valve, jerking the reg out of my mouth and pulling me to the bottom of a murky lake with my arm stuck in a weighted BC. The instructor saw me go down and pulled me out of the bc and to the surface in seconds. I was never in any real danger, I was surrounded by other divers who saw me go down and I likely could have extricated my one arm from the bc eventually. To my surprise, however, I had nightmares on a regular basis about that event for weeks. the anxiety and nightmares eventually faded on their own, but I can identify with how a few seconds of panic can affect you for a long time.